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3 Shares Set to Beat the FTSE 100 Today

William Hill, 3i Group, and Delcam all further their recent gains.

LONDON -- Shock, horror! As of 8 a.m. EST, the FTSE 100(FTSEINDICES:^FTSE) has not yet set another 52-week record! The index is rather flat today, up a meager five points to 6,299. There isn't a lot of relevant economic news going around at the moment, but the general global sentiment is reasonably optimistic -- at least, there's no region in panic right now.

But which individual shares are rising? Here are three constituents of the various indexes on the way up today.

William Hill(LSE:WMH) Bookmaker William Hill shares have been soaring, putting on another 2.5% today to take the price up 65% over the past 12 months. Today it was a trading update that triggered the rise, telling us nice things about the firm's fourth quarter and full year to Jan. 1.

Revenue for the year grew by 12%, with operating profit up 20%, and progress was made on a couple of acquisitions in the fourth quarter. A recommended offer was made for Australian and Spanish online businesses from Sportingbet, and the process of valuing Playtech's 29% stake in William Hill Online is under way.

3i(LSE:III) Shares in 3i Group are up another 3% this morning, taking the price up to a 52-week record and up nearly 50% over the past 12 months. Back in November, it was reported in the Financial Times that Sherborne Investors, based in Guernsey, intended to invest around 200 million pounds in a company it thought to be undervalued.

And today, 3i told us that Sherborne, through associates including Jeffries International, has been trading heavily in 3i shares since the beginning of January and as of Jan. 15 had acquired and passed on to Jeffries approximately 0.7% of 3i's share capital. Since then, 3i believes Jeffries has gone on to acquire a total of 1.6% of 3i's share capital.

Delcam(LSE:DLC)Delcam shares have been flying as well, and today they've jumped a further 7.3% on the back of a pre-close trading update ahead of results for the year to Dec. 31. Revenue for the year is expected to be at least 47 million pounds, with pre-tax profit reaching approximately 5 million pounds.

That's ahead of the current analyst consensus, which suggests profit of about 4.5 million pounds for the year. The shares are on a price-to-earnings ratio of about 20 now, but we have a couple of years of further earnings growth forecast. There is a small dividend expected, with a yield of less than 1%.

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